


like a storm in the desert

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Autistic Character, Bisexual Character, Caretaking, Developing Relationship, Dorks in Love, F/M, Grey-Asexual Character, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, Partners to Lovers, Partnership, Post-Battle of Scarif
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-06-01 02:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15133235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: Jyn and Cassian's relationship looks very different from the outside.





	1. Chapter 1

They escaped the way they arrived.  
  
Not everyone, of course. Only two of Cassian’s people made it out, a saboteur and a lieutenant who had thankfully picked up some medical training along the way. Kay lay in pieces where he’d died—deactivated— _died_ for them. The metal had probably fused together at this point, and … and Jyn wasn’t going to think about that. She could still hear Cassian’s scream, unless she tried not to. She was very much trying not to.  
  
Bodhi had saved them all, it transpired. Apparently he’d thrown a grenade like it was a rubber ball, though he shuddered when Baze mentioned it. And Chirrut had walked to the main controls and back again through blasterfire, without so much as singing his robes. Somehow.  
  
“The Force protected him,” Baze said quietly, but with utter assurance.

Okay.  
  
Something of her thoughts most have shown on her face. Baze settled a particularly fierce stare on her.   
  
“Are you going to say it didn’t?”  
  
“No,” said Jyn.   
  
She wasn’t intimidated. Not much could do that, these days, and she’d entirely burned through today’s reserve of fear. In any case, obviously the Force had protected Chirrut, for him to stroll through that untouched and unconcerned. It had probably protected all of them, given the odds. And of course she didn’t begrudge Baze the restoration of his faith. It was just a surprise.  
  
Then again, she didn’t really know much about him. About any of them except Cassian, through the extra—she counted—twelve days she’d known him, suspicion edging into cautious trust as they headed from Yavin 4 to Jedha. Besides, she and Cassian simply knew more about each other by way of the situation, and had spent more time together than with anyone else, and at Eadu, they … no, she didn’t want to think about that, either.  
  
He sat slumped in a corner, silent but for his increasingly laboured breaths, and one bitten-off moan when the shuttle gave a sharp swerve. She’d pulled away to steady herself, turned to say something to Baze, when the sound stabbed at her. In an instant, she scrambled back and knelt beside him, anxiously studying his face. It was strained, paler than her own, and she didn’t know what to do. Awkwardly, she placed her hand on one of his. He’d seemed to welcome it on the beach, so that was something, wasn’t it?   
  
Again, Cassian’s fingers curled around hers. This time, though, the answering squeeze felt more like a flutter.  
  
His eyes opened, heavy but focused. He stared at her blankly for a long moment, then whispered, “Jyn … Jyn, you …”  
  
“You can tell me later,” she said, her own breaths coming fast. “I’m not going anywhere.”  
  
Cassian either couldn’t hear her or chose not to. “You’re … you … you’re here. Still?”  
  
In his situation, Jyn would have been just as surprised. She  _had_  been just as surprised, when he jeopardized the mission to save her on Jedha and Eadu, and then when he proclaimed his support in the hangar bay. She’d scarcely believed her ears, in fact, or the bewildered joy that seized her. He had stayed, stayed in his own way, stuck with her where none of his kind ever had, and she didn’t quite understand, but he was saying  _welcome home_  and her head whirled.  
  
Two minutes earlier, he’d admitted that the Rebellion would never have listened to her, never have believed in her, nothing. He couldn’t mean a welcome to that. It could only be him, just him. Cassian. She’d found herself falling into orbit with him and smiling into his eyes, dazed and dazzled. Now he was the one who looked dazed—maybe the pain or the stim shot, but maybe—  
  
_Trust goes both ways._  
  
“Yes,” Jyn told him. “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re going to be fine.”  
  
Cassian nodded, let his eyes close, taking deep, regular breaths. His lungs were fine, at least, though he still looked ashen. With visible effort, he focused on her again.  
  
“You?”  
  
Something within her clenched, throat to gut. He had a blaster shot in his side, Force knew how many fractured bones, whatever that fall had done to his back, and he was still worrying about her. Most others who’d cared about her like that were few and dead.  
  
“I’m fine,” she said. At his unconvinced expression, she added, “It’s just some scratches and a sprain, Baze checked.”  
  
He relaxed, infinitesimally.  
  
“Cassian.” Her grip had to be hurting him, but she couldn’t help it. “You have to stay, all right?”  
  
He squinted around their compartment. “Yes … but where …?”   
  
Again, the shuttle lurched. Jyn braced Cassian as well as she could, but his shudder reverberated through his body and hers, and a gasp rushed through his clenched teeth. It was only a moment, but frustration boiled in her. She couldn’t make it stop, couldn’t  _do anything—_  
  
In the next instant, the motion of the shuttle fell into into perfect steadiness, so balanced and smooth that it could only mean one thing. Jyn might almost have cried. Instead, she let her head drop, pressed her brow to Cassian’s cold cheek.  
  
“We made it,” she whispered into his ear. Drawing herself together, she straightened up. “We’ve gone into hyperspace. We’re heading home.”  
  
“Home,” he echoed, and settled uncertain eyes on her. “Jyn?”  
  
“I’m here,” she said. “I haven’t left.”  
  
She wouldn’t. He was … others had cared for her, even backed her, for a time. But they rarely came back for her, much less multiple times. The least she could do was stick around.  
  
_I’ll never leave_  sprang into her mind, and she almost flinched back from the thought. She might leave. She didn’t want to. She wanted to fight, and to stay near, his loyalty to her—above the team, above the mission, over and over—almost as reassuring as his aim. Maybe more; it was all very complicated. But although she didn’t want to leave, still less did she want to repeat what had been done to her. She couldn’t promise anything she might not do.  
  
For the moment, Jyn squeezed his hand. “I’ll be right here until we get to the base, okay?”  
  
She wasn’t sure he even heard her. He seemed increasingly out of it now, glance drifting around the compartment more than scanning it, teeth digging so hard into his lip that the skin broke.   
  
More faintly, he mumbled, “Jyn.”  
  
Jyn had no idea of any way to respond, anything that might console either of them. She could only stay.

* * *

The return journey to Massassi passed in quiet, the atmosphere ranging from uneasy to mournful to triumphant without rhyme or reason. Apart from Cassian, nobody had any significant injuries; those with them had undoubtedly died before escape could be contemplated. But without fear of supplies running out, their sorrow never dropped to desperation. Cassian got the good cot and the bacta patches, and the rest of them made do.  
  
To Jyn’s total lack of surprise, Cassian’s men spoke of him with the utmost respect and kept their distance. They referred to him as  _the captain_  or, very occasionally,  _Captain Andor._ To her actual surprise, Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut mostly did the same. She couldn’t have heard  _Cassian_ from anyone else’s mouth more than twice or thrice during the entire journey to Yavin, and she couldn’t understand why. Jyn and Cassian had drifted from surnames to given names within a day of meeting. By the time they reached Jedha and stumbled into the thick of battle, they were calling out  _Jyn!_  and  _Cassian!_  without hesitation. It just—they’d formed their earliest understanding so purely in terms of personality and belief, while Kay stomped around complaining about Cassian-this and Jyn-that, that it felt strange to hear him reduced to rank and role.   
  
She supposed that was irrational, in its way. Cassian said he’d lost everything at six, just as Jyn had done at eight. Nothing about him gave the impression that he’d gained any of it back beyond Kay, any more than Jyn had beyond Saw.   
  
Still.  
  
“Cassian,” she said firmly, one day before their scheduled arrival. She jabbed him in his shoulder, the good one, and when his eyes flew open, she felt a bit like she’d stuck her hand into a mirror and reached her reflection instead of shattered glass. “Wake up.”  
  
He tended to lash out at anyone else who touched him in his sleep, something Jyn considered entirely reasonable. The others in the shuttle posed no danger, of course, but—well. Even Jyn herself found it difficult to leave him alone with anyone else, something in her both furiously protective and fearful of loss. The first time he fell asleep, her own breath nearly suffocated her, until Baze said it was good, his body trying to heal itself rather than giving up. He spoke as gently as Jyn had ever heard him, which seemed odd, but she took what reassurance she could.  
  
Even so, she stuck nearby every time Lieutenant Sefla changed the bacta patch, and watched him like a Krayt dragon the whole time.   
  
Sefla was the only full officer to join the mission, besides Cassian, but he didn’t seem to expect deference. Rather the opposite, in fact. He always changed the patch in silence, gave her a vaguely sympathetic look, and left, his saboteur in tow.  
  
In fact, Sefla appeared to be the reason that Jyn got any access to Cassian after they all reached Massassi Base. The medics refused her, at first. Then Sefla showed up, muttered something to a doctor, and gestured at Bodhi and Baze, who nodded agreement with whatever it was. She didn’t really care. The moment she was granted permission, Jyn spared Sefla and her friends a grateful glance before striding alongside the medics and demanding answers.  
  
They, too, proved remarkably tolerant. Although they didn’t answer right away, they led her to Cassian’s narrow room, let her stay there for hours at a time, and explained his injuries and treatments, including how and why they’d sedated him. Meanwhile, nobody would inform poor Bodhi about anything, not even Jyn’s sprained ankle.  
  
“I don’t see why,” she said. “They told me about every one of Cassian’s ribs.”  
  
He was in bacta, again. Most of the breaks had healed, but whatever he’d done—whatever Krennic had done—to his back seemed to be more complicated. The medics assured her that he would walk again, which Jyn considered one of the least reassuring things that anyone could say about a soldier’s spinal cord.  
  
“That’s different, I guess,” Bodhi replied, smiling faintly. “It’s nice to know they had good news for you, anyway.”  
  
Puzzled, she said, “For him. I’m fine.”  
  
“Right, of course,” said Bodhi, anxiety rushing through his voice, his face. Jyn almost winced. She hadn’t meant— “I just wanted … I … I’m glad for you, that … it’s nice that they’re telling you things. I mean, you know him so much better than us. And everybody, I bet.”  
  
“Oh.”   
  
Jyn thought about it, the soothing quiet of Cassian’s room in the med bay, the rarity of interruptions. The  _lost everything_  without any indication of having ever recovered anything but Kay: Kay and then each other, reflected and staring. And she thought of Kay, reduced to rubble somewhere in the destruction of the Citadel, lingering in a set of programming notes in Cassian’s quarters. She’d found them, of course, after a good four hours with his security codes. If they had to evacuate, that rude, condescending, determinedly loyal droid was going with them. But she knew how to break and alter files, not anything on the level of generating droid consciousness from notes. Kay might return from the dead; but for now, he remained dead.   
  
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I suppose I do.”  
  
Bodhi patted her shoulder. Jyn didn’t really go in for that, not since Saw, but it was Bodhi. She managed a smile.  
  
She didn’t even try to manufacture one for the stranger who strolled up to her while she was trying to figure out solo sabacc. The cards had seemed as good a way as any to pass the time. With Cassian in bacta for a good hour, Chirrut and Baze(!) meditating, Bodhi enthusiastically betraying Imperial protocols, and no news or pressing tasks, Jyn didn’t quite know what to do with herself. Nobody had dragged her before some officer and insisted on her joining up, anyway.   
  
“Hey there,” said the stranger.   
  
She was bored already.   
  
“You don’t look like a Rebel,” he went on, tone still friendly.   
  
Jyn glanced up at him. To her dismay, he looked startlingly like—like her. Not physically, but boots, trousers, shirt, vest, holster. His brown hair fell slightly over his face. He leaned against the corner of the wall where she’d secluded herself, arms folded, mouth curled into a smile that aimed for confident and reached cocky.   
  
“Neither do you,” she said.  
  
He grinned. “Me? I’m not here to die for some cause. I’m getting my reward and I’m getting the hell out of here. You?”  
  
Jyn remembered that first bargain she’d struck with Mon Mothma. Although she hadn’t meant to reveal anything, her jaw clenched. She asked,  
  
“What did they offer you?”  
  
“Credits,” the stranger said smugly, not appearing to care that she hadn’t answered. “Lots and lots of credits. I broke their precious princess out of prison, recovered some plans, all of it. I’m practically a hero, you know.”  
  
Jyn jolted up so suddenly that the cards spilled off the table. “The plans! Where? When?”  
  
With a laugh that nearly got his nose broken, he held up his hands. “Slow down, sister. We just got here. It’ll be at least an hour before they’re analyzed.”  
  
She glared at him, hating that it was true. High Command would tell her nothing. Jyn forced her breaths to slow and even out, betray no further weakness. How had this arse—what—he had to be talking about Princess Leia, captured just beyond Scarif—she really had hidden the plans somehow—Force, Jyn was glad she hadn’t told Cassian about any of it in his few moments of lucidity—and she’d have to tell Bodhi and Baze, if Chirrut hadn’t already—  
  
“You care an awful lot about all that for … whatever you are,” he said, smile easy and his eyes sharp. “Funny. Not a lot of women around here.”  
  
“I hadn’t noticed,” lied Jyn. “I have to go to the med-bay. Bye.”  
  
He raised his brows and glanced down her, half-laughing. “You look fine to me.”  
  
At most times, she would have casually despised him for that, relegated him to  _one of those_  and not bothered with a second thought. But—the plans. Had he really brought the plans? Would he even know about them if he hadn’t? She certainly could believe that he wasn’t a Rebel. If he’d found her father’s plans, found Princess Leia, and—  
  
For a few seconds, Jyn focused all her attention on him. His air of lazy charisma—trying too hard for it, but charisma nonetheless—seemed forced. At a glance, she could see discomfort in half a dozen signals: creases here, forced looseness there, something tense and jittery in his stance. Rather how she must have looked when she bumped Cassian’s arm in the shuttle.  
  
Force,  _bumped his arm._ Through multiple layers of clothes. Nothing, yet her brain had nearly shorted out, and she’d found her gaze drifting all the way down his body. She was ridiculous. His clothes didn’t even fit.  
  
And she remembered Cassian’s own response, his lips parting and eyes flicking from her face downwards, echoing her own glance. He’d looked at once shocked and shy, hand fumbling on the hatch just above him. And—  
  
All right, they were both ridiculous.  
  
With considerable distrust, Jyn eyed the stranger. They’d just met, he couldn’t feel anything like that. Even with Cassian, it took her a good five minutes to register him as anything but a threat, the Rebellion embodied. She felt sure it took him just as long to see her as anything but a different sort of threat.  
  
“You waiting for someone?” she said abruptly.  
  
The man winced. “No. I … well, I … no. Definitely not.”  
  
“That was very convincing,” said Jyn. She gathered the cards from the table and stacked them together.   
  
Predictably, he shuffled a little. “I don’t need to convince her! Or him. I mean, someone. Anyone!”  
  
She didn’t think he was even fooling himself. Kneeling down to pick up the last few cards, Jyn added them to her stack and set the whole thing in their box. The metallic cover slid smoothly into place. Nice quality, this; most of the players Jyn knew had rougher equipment. But then, Cassian seemed to like nice things.  
  
Didn’t have a lot of them, as far as she’d found. But what he did have all was very good quality. Surprisingly good quality for someone who appeared to get paid in hope and jackets.  
  
Jyn respected that.  
  
“Or you,” the man added, more firmly. “Who are you, anyway?”  
  
After a moment’s contemplation, she decided that too many people here knew her name to have any hope of hiding it.  
  
“Jyn Erso,” she said.   
  
When he extended his hand, Jyn braced herself and shook it.  
  
“Han Solo,” he replied. “Captain of the  _Millennium Falcon_. You heard of her?”  
  
“No,” said Jyn, thought it actually did sound vaguely familiar. “I don’t think so. And I  _am_  going to the med-bay, so unless you have someone to see—”  
  
Solo gave a long sigh. “What is this place? And I … guess I might. Not that she’s … I mean, she’d love to see me. Obviously. It’s just a check-up. Pretty boring.”  
  
“Uh-huh,” said Jyn, shoving the card box into her vest pocket.   
  
She headed towards the med-bay without further conversation, and he fell into step beside her. Despite his manners and obvious lies, nothing about him triggered any particular alarms. And he’d brought the plans. Probably. Jyn, though still on her guard in an unfamiliar place, alongside an unfamiliar person, decided to tolerate him. She trusted her instincts; and, in a peculiar, undefined way, she pitied him.  
  
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “So, you always organize your sabacc deck before you get checked out by the medics?”  
  
“It’s not me,” she said. “A friend took a fall.”  
  
_Friend_  didn’t seem quite right, but she couldn’t think of anything better.   
  
Solo snorted. “With you people, that’s—what, broke five different bones?”  
  
“Vertebrae,” admitted Jyn. “And it’s his deck, anyway.”  
  
“Ah,” he said, voice steadying. “Your partner?”  
  
The memories of their scant weeks together cascaded through Jyn’s mind. The two of them in Jedha, walking together through the streets, scrambling to protect each other’s backs in the fight. Back on Yavin, marching into the shuttle together, her friends and Cassian’s men backing them. On the way to Scarif, organizing the mission and never even considering anyone else at her side. And in the Citadel: Cassian giving orders, but not before running them past her; Jyn leaping into action, but not before checking with him.  
  
Yes, that word fit much better. She could almost have thanked Solo for it. Not that she felt any obligation to this near-stranger, but something in her welcomed the space to respond.  
  
“Yes,” replied Jyn. “He is.”  
  
“Sorry,” Solo said inexplicably. “I didn’t realize.”  
  
After considering that for a baffling quarter-second, Jyn dismissed it. She had bigger problems. Solo, in any case, didn’t seem to expect more. They cordially shook hands at the front of the med-bay, Solo whistling as he headed down a different hall to … pine, Jyn assumed. She paid him no more mind and stalked her way to Cassian’s room.   
  
At the door, she opened the information panel, which blinked Cassian’s formal status at her. He was out of surgery, stable, and not available to visitors. Jyn scoffed under her breath. As if the base’s pathetic security codes could stop her after the hours she’d spent on Cassian’s monstrosities. She easily tracked down the permissions and activated them.   
  
As the door spiraled open, Jyn saw not Cassian, but the back of a tall, fair-haired man. He stood with his arms folded, all but looming over the bed. Only when the doors had completely opened could she make out Cassian, lying motionless on the bed with no sign of pain, but every sign of exhaustion. He blinked sleepy, unfocused eyes, clearly fighting to stay awake.  
  
Without turning around, the intruder snapped, “I told you that I required absolute privacy.”  
  
“Yes, well.” Jyn smiled without a sliver of humour. “We both know I’m not much for following orders, general.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Without turning around, General Draven sighed.  
  
 _Sigh_ , Jyn decided, was too strong a word for it. Even the exhalation sounded regimented, contained to a breath just that bit more abrupt and more forceful than usual. Nevertheless, it managed to exude strained patience.  
  
Without hesitation, she walked around him to lean against Cassian’s bed, placing herself between them with absolutely no attempt at subtlety.  
  
Cassian himself seemed scarcely to notice. He lay at a slight incline, pale and heavy-eyed, studying his hands with the fierce concentration of a—well, of a man dragged out of deep sedation.  
  
“Erso,” said Draven. “I should have guessed.”  
  
He sounded more like he was receiving an unexpected visit from his relatives-in-law than that he’d, say,  _sent an assassin after her father_. Oh, the hand could have been Cassian’s, and the choice; but the will was Draven’s. Jyn wouldn’t forget.  
  
She didn’t bother replying. Silence could be its own weapon, and she’d already spoken with Draven more than she ever wanted to.  
  
An hour or two after Jyn had first started wandering around the med-bay, a sharp-eyed medic had insisted on examining her leg and then on dropping her into a quick bacta treatment. She woke in blessed peace, fell asleep—then woke again to Draven and Mon Mothma watching her, an experience she felt no desire to ever again repeat. She couldn’t understand why they would hover around her rather than Cassian, why they would trust her answers over Cassian’s, why they would have anything to do with her at all, in that appalled instant.  
  
Over the next several minutes, it only got worse. Draven simply ignored her questions about Cassian as he demanded details about the mission: details that Cassian would know. In the end, it was Mothma who broke in and assured her that Captain Andor was alive, and as well as possible; they just couldn’t know the length of his bacta treatments, and needed every detail she could provide right now.  
  
Jyn, though not fooled by the sympathy in her face—she knew that trick too well—accepted the offering as the best one she could get. So she answered their questions. Answered all of them once, and then twice, thrice, never varying from the first time. She knew something had gone wrong, must have gone wrong, long before they told her.  
  
Thanks to Han Solo, she knew it’d gone right, in the end. Here and now. And yet, here and now, Draven stood before her. Again.  
  
Jyn thought about sitting down. There was only one chair—her chair—and she could make herself clear that way. But Draven towered over Cassian and Mothma, much less Jyn. She had enough of a disadvantage without making it worse. Instead, she borrowed from Draven’s own tactics and ignored him altogether.  
  
“You shouldn’t be awake yet,” she told Cassian.  
  
His face remained drawn in effort, but some of the heavier lines faded, and the entire slope of his shoulders relaxed as he lifted his eyes.  
  
“Jyn,” he said, her name full of relief.  
  
She felt abruptly convinced that he’d been asking after her, too—and no doubt received no better answer.  
  
Cassian said nothing else, but nodded at Draven by way of explanation. Only then did Jyn bother looking the general in the face.  
  
“We need answers,” Draven said brusquely. “And we need them now. You’ll do as well as him.”  
  
“Better, I imagine,” said Jyn, closing her fingers over Cassian’s shoulder. It felt thinner, though that might well mean nothing. The memory of his voice whispered in her mind— _leave it, leave it, that’s it_ —and it sounded weaker by far than the single word she’d just heard. But then, it had been weaker. He’d …  
  
She focused her attention on Draven. “I’ve told you all we know, though.”  
  
Disregarding that, he said, “This weakness. Where did your father say he planted it?”  
  
“Throughout the Death Star,” replied Jyn. “It’s designed to self-destruct, like I told you. One direct blast to the reactor module should set off a chain reaction that explodes the whole station.”  
  
A part of her, desperate and fragile, urged her to ask,  _That’s what you found, didn’t you? In the plans? You should have seen it, why are you talking to us—_  
  
No. She knew they must have found her father’s trap in her father’s design, unless Solo had been lying about the plans all along. But that would explain still less. No, they’d found the plans, and found Galen’s trick, and this was just a matter of … of confirmation or some nonsense like that, as if it made any difference at this point.  
  
Regardless, she refused to ask.  
  
Draven nodded, his stolid expression unaltered. “Is that true, Andor?”  
  
Only raw obstinacy kept Jyn from bristling at him. She confined herself to a clench of her jaw, confident at least that Cassian would support her as far as his faculties allowed. These days, she didn’t expect any stabs in the back. Only the front.  
  
“Yes, sir,” said Cassian. She glanced down at his face, just in time to see a faint grimace disappear. “That is my understanding.”  
  
Sweat stood out from his skin, though he felt cold through the thin material of his shirt. Pain, undoubtedly; the medics had sedated him for a reason. Jyn took care not to tighten her grip, but fixed her stare on Draven with renewed disdain.  
  
“You’ve seen it,” she added. “What are you going to do now?”  
  
“You’re clever, whatever else you may be,” Draven said. “You know perfectly well what we’re going to do. There’s no other choice.”  
  
“The time to fight is now?” said Jyn, coolly.  
  
“It seems so,” Draven replied. “And it must be done right. If we fail, we’ll all be dust by this time tomorrow.”  
  
That time, she did flinch. Not at the prospect of death, which she had faced far too many times to cower from. But that sounded like something Saw might have said. Like things Saw had said, many times. But he never stopped there.  
  
“And if we succeed?”  
  
The curl of Draven’s lip approximated a smile. “Then you all can enjoy your promotions.”  
  
He turned to leave, apparently considering that adequate.  
  
“I haven’t even joined the Rebellion,” Jyn protested. It was certainly not adequate.  
  
“You have now,” said Draven. His gaze flicked from her, to Cassian, to her again. “Get some rest, both of you.”  
  
And with that did, he really did leave.  
  
“Is he serious?” she demanded, more from the universe than Cassian. Right now, she didn’t feel like demanding much from Cassian. Instead, she braced her arm against his back. “I hate it, but he’s right. Halfway right. Can you sleep like this?”  
  
“The plans?” he said stubbornly.  
  
“They’re here. Some smuggler helped,” said Jyn. “None of us can do anything more, right now. Draven was just confirming the intel—if we can trust him that far.”  
  
Cassian gave a groggy nod. “He doesn’t usually lie for no reason.”  
  
Jyn knew better than to confuse honesty, even far more reliable honesty than Draven’s, with trust. Trust was about loyalty, the sort that inspired an expectation that someone would always have your back, and fulfilled that expectation in word and deed. Perhaps he’d given Cassian reason for that kind of trust; she felt nothing of the kind.  
  
Not towards him, anyway.  
  
“Cassian,” she said, “go to sleep.”  
  


* * *

  
Mon Mothma had never been an excitable woman, even in their youth, with the Republic corrupting itself everywhere they looked. But anticipation lit up her face every time she returned to Erso’s plans.  
  
Draven couldn’t have said which Erso he meant. It didn’t matter—or it hadn’t.  
  
“Well?” she demanded.  
  
“I talked to Erso,” he said. “It matches up.”  
  
Mothma took a deep breath, one that seemed to restore her to her usual serene dignity. “Do you trust her?”  
  
“Unfortunately, yes,” said Draven, “when it comes to this.”  
  
The extent of his distrust for Jyn Erso could hardly be quantified, otherwise. But in this—well, there was a point at which healthy skepticism drifted into paranoia. She’d proved her loyalty as far as the Death Star went.  
  
“If we succeed,” Mothma said, picking her words with unusual care, “you know what we’re going to have to do with her.”  
  
Draven did know. Didn’t mean he had to like it.  
  
But he knew.  
  


* * *

  
Two hours after the Death Star plans arrived: Jyn and Cassian woke again in the med-bay. This time, they stayed alert, eyes clear and grips firm.  
  
Two and a half hours after: the medics let Cassian try to walk, testing more cybernetic implants and repairs than Jyn cared to think about. He limped heavily—but he walked.  
  
Three hours after: the quick errands escalated into full evacuation, all but the pilots and a select few of the leadership scattered out from Massassi Base. And Rogue One. Jyn and Cassian, along with the rest, refused to leave—but he walked out of the med-bay under his own power, only leaning a little on her shoulder when she offered, after.  
  
Five hours after: the Death Star arrived. Jyn and Cassian had nothing left to give, but they meant to stand witness, either to the Empire’s hobbling or the Rebellion’s. And so they did, huddling with Baze and Chirrut and Bodhi as Galen Erso’s handiwork burst into a billion shards of light high above.  
  
Six hours after: they were Lieutenant Erso and Commander Andor, heroes of the Rebellion.  
  


* * *

  
“Commander,” said Draven, pointedly.  
  
For the first time in … most of the weeks he’d known her, Cassian felt some relief at Jyn’s absence. She’d gone to check in on Bodhi, who apparently had worked himself into exhaustion in the evacuation.  
  
“Sir.”  
  
“About Erso.” He paused, the stretch of silence neither condemning nor approving. Cassian waited. “I trust you can provide an accurate assessment of her abilities?”  
  
Cassian couldn’t remember the last time Draven had questioned his accuracy. He just suppressed a scowl.  
  
“Yes, sir,” he said, keeping his face politely attentive.  
  
For the next ten minutes, he answered Draven’s battery of questions in as exact detail as he could. At the end, his general gave a satisfied nod.  
  
“Then I see no reason to alter customary procedure.”  
  
The steady line of Cassian’s thoughts stumbled to a halt. Customary procedure? Jyn? What procedure? He felt that he should know—Draven clearly thought he should know—but nothing came to mind.  
  
“I’m not sure I follow,” he said.  
  
Draven sighed. “You know that Intelligence prefers to assign partners to each other, if they prove effective. That is, obviously, not in question. If you were aiming for secrecy, you missed the mark.”  
  
For a few more seconds, Cassian remained utterly bewildered. Of course Intelligence assigned partners to each other; that was what partnership meant. Did he mean maintaining partnerships that achieved success, or—but what did secrecy have to do with—  
  
Oh.  _Oh._  
  
At the realization, raw yearning washed through him. He rarely cared for individual people at all, much less felt any preoccupation with them, but Jyn seemed to fill every recess of his thoughts. She had almost from the first. It was like nothing before, nothing at all. He couldn’t have put an exact word to it, aloud—or wouldn’t, but privately he felt a dizzying mix of fascination, worry, attraction, respect, and sheer  _liking._  Sometimes he looked at her and really did feel dizzy, skin sparking at the slightest hint of a touch.  
  
It felt nonsensical, but Jyn stared back at him with his own heady focus, jolted at the same surface nothings, and he thought she might be just as nonsensical. Maybe, she—maybe—  
  
He’d hoped for more unlikely things.  
  
(Not for himself, but there was a first time for everything.)  
  
Alongside the rush of longing, though, came something else: relief. Intelligence did prefer to recruit partners together, or bring in those of established operatives. It reduced the risk of leaks, concentrated focus on operations, and raised motivation to carry off those operations with minimal loss. Also, couples could often pass unnoticed where individuals might raise suspicion; real couples naturally tended to be more convincing, especially for extended periods of time.  
  
He’d always thought of it in those terms, remote and pragmatic. At this point, Cassian himself had no idea what he’d stop at for Jyn’s sake. Maybe nothing. It had certainly felt like it when he climbed after her.   
  
He didn’t know about how much Jyn echoed the feeling, but her scream still echoed in his memory. He couldn’t recall the last time anyone had called out his given name like that (though in fairness, he rarely heard it from anyone but Kay at all, until now).  
  
He remembered, too, her blazing fury when she looked at him and then at the man in white. Not only for him, but—in part. She certainly cared to some extent; he thought it probable enough that both would feel more urgency together than alone. He hoped so.  
  
And there he was again.  
  
“Ah,” he said. “I had misunderstood you, sir.”  
  


* * *

  
Mon Mothma, Draven, and company didn’t so much offer Jyn a place in Intelligence as inform her of it. As soon as Cassian’s limp grew less obtrusive, they’d be going undercover as an Imperial major and his wife at a minor records facility. Nothing like Scarif; Draven wanted personnel records for his own purposes.  
  
“It’s hard to picture you as some officer’s wife,” said Baze.  
  
“Probably hard to picture me as lots of people I’ve been,” she returned. “But it’s not that sort of thing. Zara Lannan is a respectable programmer.”  
  
Zara the programmer honestly sounded a lot easier than some of the other personas she’d taken on. _Cassian’s wife_  seemed quite a bit more difficult. In some ways. Maybe. She just—  
  
It’d be different.  
  
A full two days had passed since Luke Skywalker blew the Death Star into countless burning pieces. As Lieutenant Jyn Erso of Rebel Intelligence (that still boggled her, a little), she’d acquired quarters of her own, which she had yet to sleep in. But she could claim good reasons for that, namely that a) she’d promised the medics that she’d keep a close eye on Cassian in exchange for his discharge, and b) his new quarters were positively palatial by her standards. So she’d more or less invited herself to stay in them, and Cassian didn’t complain.  
  
That part, at least, wouldn’t be any different. Probably.  
  
Later that evening, she ran into Bodhi on the way to Cassian’s quarters. Their quarters, since she now kept her spare blasters there.  
  
He flushed. “Oh. Um. I’ll just … er, be going.”  
  
It took Jyn a good long moment to follow the misdirection of his thoughts. “No, I just—”  
  
Bodhi held up his hands. “It’s not any of my business.”  
  
With that, he all but fled, Jyn staring after him in bewilderment. There could be any number of innocent explanations, including the real ones. Why would Bodhi—  
  
Bodhi. Bodhi, whose introduction to them would have been Cassian rushing into a crumbling bunker. Baze’s and Chirrut’s, too. Then the fight at Eadu, and just after, Cassian showing up with a strike force and open vulnerability, and Jyn leaning into him in the hangar. Jyn and Cassian unthinkingly pairing off on Scarif, and clinging together when the shuttle came for them, and then after. Baze’s unexpected gentleness, and Sefla’s—the medics excluding the others from Cassian's room, but not Jyn—Solo’s apology—even Mon Mothma’s sympathy.  _Mon Mothma._  
  
It wasn’t Bodhi. It was everyone.  
  


* * *

  
Jyn dodged into their quarters, half-disappointed and half-relieved to find Cassian there, sitting on his bed with a datapad. She’d have liked some time to organize her thoughts, or to decide what they were. Instead, she just waited for the door to hit the ground behind her, and said,  
  
“Do you know that everybody thinks we’re lovers?”  
  
A certain amount of amusement touched her discomfort as he started, then flushed up to his cheekbones.  
  
“I do now,” Cassian said.  
  
She gave him an exasperated look.  
  
“Not just now. I mean—Draven said something about it.”  
  
“Draven?” Somehow, that particular horror hadn’t occured to her. “ _Draven_  talked about it?”  
  
But now she remembered him saying  _welcome to Rebel Intelligence_  in the least welcoming tone possible, and yet one which invited no argument. As if neither of them had a choice—  
  
“Not as such,” Cassian assured her, setting his datapad down. He didn’t fidget, but looked very much as if he’d like to. “It’s standard practice in Intelligence to assign partners together, if they’re successful. For security, and … efficacy.”  
  
Jyn made her way to the bed, kicking off her boots and dropping down beside him. “That’s why they’re keeping us together?”  
  
“I’m sure stealing the plans has something to do with it,” said Cassian. “But partly, yes.”  
  
“Did you tell him the truth?” she pressed.  
  
In reality, she didn’t know what  _the truth_  meant to Cassian. To herself, even, but—had he wanted—had he—  
  
Yearning hit her like punch in the throat, a heady longing to reach out for more. She could, in this very moment. For once, though, she didn’t dare.  
  
“No,” Cassian told her, his expression set in neutral lines. Not cold, just unreadable. “I didn’t want to … it seemed better to talk to you, see what you thought.”  
  
That warmed her as much as the longing, as much as the familiar lock of their gazes, searching each other’s for—something.  
  
“We’re a good team,” said Jyn, picking her words as she’d evade mines. “I think that what other people assume is their problem, not ours.”  
  
Cassian’s rare smile touched his mouth; Jyn’s rarer smile curved hers. She almost fled again from the jolt that sparked through her, shivering down her veins, but this was her home. She had nowhere else to be. Instead, she held herself upright, meeting his eyes steadily.  
  
“I think so, too,” he said. “And partner is such a versatile term, yes?”  
  
A laugh rose in her throat, unwilled but unhindered.  
  
“Yes,” said Jyn. “It is.”


	3. Chapter 3

Zara Lannan was a poised, attractive, professional woman, married to a pleasant and respectable officer.

She’d spent the day talking over security codes with another Imperial programmer, smothering all trace of Jyn Erso—even as she silently thanked the Partisan who’d taught her slicing. Danna? Jyn thought the woman had been Danna, but she couldn’t remember all the names of the people who passed through the Partisans back then. Some got siphoned off into the Alliance; most died.

Zara, at any rate, was the sort of narrowly good-natured woman who disliked death and suffering, but talked vaguely about the rule of law and dismissed the rest as Rebel propaganda. Major Lannan prided himself on the precision of his conduct while happily remote from actual warfare; he served on a quiet backwater planet that had seen no real change between the Republic and the Empire.

Lieutenant Erso and Commander Andor of the Rebellion heartily disliked them both. But the higher officers of Major Lannan’s sector had been summoned to a gathering (otherwise known as a five-day party) with the local brass. Normally, the Rebellion took little interest in such a peaceful region, but the gathering happened to be taking place at Elis Place, which incidentally stored the sector’s personnel records. Draven wanted them for unknowable Draven reasons, so Jyn and Cassian buried themselves into Zara and Lannan and endured.

On top of that, the Lannans were, obviously, married. The Alliance operatives stuck inside them were, back in the Rebellion, just as obviously lovers. But packed inside _them_ were Jyn and Cassian, and they were nothing of the kind.

Well, maybe something of the kind. But certainly not—not—

Jyn opened her eyes in the near-dark, letting her gaze drift down the line of Cassian’s sleeping (maybe sleeping) body. The Lannans’ bed was easily twice the size of their own; where Jyn had considered Cassian’s commander’s quarters palatial, by her standards, these apartments were the real deal. Yet sleeping in this one, a good foot apart, felt more intimate, more dangerous.

Not that they ever woke a foot apart. Solidarity, she told herself. Partnership.

After all, partnership could mean many things.

Sometimes she let herself imagine what it’d be like as the real (“real”) Zara and Lannan. They’d been married for nine months. Zara might still thrill at pressing kisses to Lannan’s mouth and throat, at the taste and texture of his skin under her tongue and teeth. Lannan might greedily run his hands up from her waist, cup her breasts and bury his face in them, beard scraping over the soft skin and jagged scar. They might—

_Not helping, Jyn._

And the worst part—all right. She was an adult woman with a healthy interest in all humanoid genders, and Cassian was a good-looking man. A very good-looking man. Most people had fantasies, fine. But she didn’t … it felt strange, all jumbled up with loyalty and partnership and general affection. She never imagined it as casual, a one-time thing or friendly convenience.

Not rough, either. It was slight brushes and cautious smiles that electrified her brain, his voice softening over her name, their usual ready glances turned shy and intense. An odd companionate gentleness seemed to fill her alongside the hunger, or threaded through it, or _something_ , and—

Jyn couldn’t separate craving and caring, and somehow the mixture burned more than either alone. She’d never felt anything like this, never.

Jyn and Cassian spent three days establishing their bona fides. One day would have been enough for Jyn, but better safe than dead. Or captured.

“Definitely better than being captured,” Jyn said, and Cassian gave a sympathetic nod, though he said nothing about how and where the Rebellion had snatched her up. They both knew her history perfectly well.

Their succession of easy agreements felt nearly as odd as the wistful longing that meandered through her. It never left, but it didn’t—it didn’t hurt, except as a pleasant ache, like sore muscles after a good bout.

On the fourth day, they maneuvered their way into a group of particularly obnoxious officers, trophy spouses, and a few people who were neither. The Lannans dutifully carried on their end of the conversation, Zara with barely (not at all) concealed irritation at every condescending question and smug dismissal of the war consuming most of the galaxy. When she excused herself, the more sensible of the others looked either sympathetic, or at least comprehending.

She didn’t look back to check on Cassian; he could handle himself. But she heard a burst of laughter.

“Newlyweds, eh?”

“No,” he said evenly, “we’ve been married almost a year.”

“Heh, when Jorit and I—”

Jyn did actually slip into the washroom and repair infinitesimal smearing of the kohl around her eyes. Luckily, she even chatted briefly with another woman.

“I just needed some space to breathe, you know?” she said.

The other woman smiled.

“I do! But my partner will be missing me. Should I let your husband know you didn’t tumble into the abyss?”

“Thanks,” said Jyn. “It’s Major Lannan. I adore him, but I think I might murder some of his friends if I stick with him the whole night.”

The woman laughed and headed back.

To her surprise, the rest went off without a hitch. Jyn slipped away, found an unguarded terminal, and readily broke through what went for security while doing her best to look lost and confused. Copying the files over, she slipped them into Zara’s purse and wandered around with even more bewilderment until a guard directed her back to the ballroom.

Zara returned to find her husband still holding forth with his “friends,” several of whom looked increasingly desperate, but unable to think of a polite way to flee. Particularly, she suspected, because he outranked the bulk of them.

“There you are, sweetheart,” said Major Lannan ( _not_ Cassian, Jyn told herself), with a warm smile. She flushed. “What became of you?”

“I got lost,” Zara said sheepishly.

The men grinned at her. Her arrival, however, broke Lannan’s attention, and most of the others managed to make their escape not long afterwards. Predictably, the Lannans mumbled excuses for another departure, and slipped away together.

As they made their way down the hall, they encountered no obstacles beyond an unexpected lieutenant. As they heard his footsteps on the way to their rooms, Cassian slipped an arm about Jyn’s waist, heat flaring along her skin even as she followed suit. For a brief instant, it reminded her of Scarif, half-carrying him out and knowing it would probably make no difference. But Cassian stood upright, his breath even and his knuckles tracing aimless little patterns.

If the lieutenant had meant to redirect them, he changed his mind as soon as he saw Cassian’s rank. Lannan’s. It was Lannan stroking her—Zara’s—waist, Lannan’s low laugh, Lannan flashing his insignia to sneak away with his pretty wife.

“I—I beg your pardon, sir,” the lieutenant said, as Cassian turned around.

“It’s my fault,” said Zara. “I, ah, needed my husband’s help with … something. We’ll be rejoining the others shortly.”

He repressed a look of amusement with little success. “Yes, ma’am. Well, I don’t want to get in your way.”

And that was that.

Laughing, they walked over to the lift and stumbled inside. Standing there in each other’s arms, making nonsense conversation she couldn’t even remember for any onlookers, she did think of Scarif. They’d stood almost like this as Jyn braced him with her body, the arm about his waist then at the back of his neck, in his hair. She’d kissed him then, in fear and desperation and the sheer force of emotion at his survival, his return, just how badly he was hurt. She imagined doing it again, his mouth warm instead of cold, eyes closed instead of pained. Zara would. Lieutenant Erso would—why not?

Jyn’s gaze flickered to his mouth, lingered; Cassian’s mirrored hers, trailed down the same path. She could feel his breath against her, in his body and against her face, he must feel hers, and maybe it was her imagination, but she thought she could hear it, too, that bit heavier as he babbled on about some colonel.

But they were Jyn and Cassian, tender behind their double shells, and this time, easily victorious rather than desperately so. They did nothing except look, and pretend to more.

In their quarters, they immediately released each other. In tandem, but Jyn felt a little colder nonetheless.

“Do you have it?” said Cassian, after they searched the apartment for bugs.

Jyn extracted the file from the purse, and held it between her fingers. “Got all the files, no problem. Draven should be happy.”

“Draven? Happy?”

They both grinned at each other, shyness gone.

For Jyn, for now, it was enough.

* * *

Neither Jyn nor Cassian cared for undercover missions, even quick sabotage operations, but in the months that followed, they took as many as they could. Jyn, in particular, pressed Draven for them. **  
**

Everyone else gave her knowing looks that, all things considered, she found remarkably grating. Draven just sighed. But as long as they returned successful, he let them have their way. Or rather, he let Cassian have his way, and grudgingly accepted Jyn as a sort of appendage to him. She didn’t care for it, but she cared less for Kay’s gaping absence, and vacant KX droids didn’t go around finding themselves. 

While they encountered the occasional sentient KX unit, they weren’t about to rip out those ones’ existences except in desperate circumstances. They needed a deactivated or unprogrammed one, which meant they needed access to Imperial storage, which meant going undercover.

They didn’t talk about it much. But now and then Cassian would remark, “Kay always says—said …” and flinch from himself.

(She guessed that Cassian often flinched from himself, invisibly. Visibly, though: that was different. Jyn remembered the first year after her mother died, then the one after Saw abandoned her, and ached for him and herself. They’d spent their lives in vicious harmony, the two of them.)

Now and then Jyn would say, “We’ll manage it,” or something equally uninspired. But Cassian required little for hope, however tentative. They fell back on their usual obstinacy with every success-coated failure, even the narrowest.

It took three months to find an acceptable posting with acceptable access to acceptable parts. A particularly long three months, in Jyn’s estimation. Partly, it was the always-uncertain thing between them: both nervously aware of it, neither quite willing to risk the foundation beneath. Jyn’s imagination ran wild, but only her imagination.

She’d encountered no previous lovers, no rumours, no anything. At first she assumed any others had transferred to another base or died, but it didn’t seem to be the case. Apparently, until she took up residence in his quarters (less expansive now, because they were operating out of fucking  _Hoth_ ), people who a) knew of his existence and b) hadn’t directly served under him considered him a sort of organic droid. Some of them still did, because they thought of Jyn that way, too. Not that she cared. She liked droids better than most organics, anyway.

But she did, sometimes, wonder if he just didn’t … feel anything, that way. Not shyness, not caution, but real disinterest. At other times, they found themselves gazing at each other or drifting into smiling synchrony, and—well, she didn’t wonder, then. Much.

The other thing that stretched out those first months, though, was far more of a strain. Draven wanted the personnel records because, in his words, they now had a prime recruiting opportunity.

Alderaan.

Not many Alderaanians had ever joined the Empire outright. But some. At least twelve or fifteen thousand of them had to be scattered across the galaxy; a good number had already defected. Others wavered. Jyn and Cassian passed from tracking down records to tracking down individuals, quietly laying groundwork, one by one by one.

She’d bludgeoned people to death, blown up factories, dirtied and bloodied her hands countless ways. Cassian, too. But hunting down and exploiting the survivors of planetary genocide remained one of the most distasteful things they had ever done.

They didn’t talk about that, either. But they let their faces speak for them, afterwards—and if their heads leaned a little closer, their arms brushed a little more, that was their business. They had their own channels of communication.

Then, after those three months, they simply found a security droid sitting in a dusty store room. Jyn could hardly believe their luck, and believed it still less when they checked and found it free of all data. But she couldn’t seriously believe it a trap; even if they were suspected of being Rebel spies, the amount of information required to identify Cassian specifically, and Cassian as the former “owner” of a stolen security droid who now searched for a new one, seemed still more beyond belief.

She proved to be right. While they could hardly walk out with the thing, they cautiously disassembled it piece by piece, smuggling the individual components out to a decidedly perturbed Bodhi. The torso was the hardest; they finally just brazened it out and carted it away in full sight, claiming to be melting it down for ship parts.

Imperials could really be astoundingly stupid.

Then came the weeks of labour. Cassian worked on finishing the disassembly of the head to retrieve the datachip, while Jyn repaired and re-wired the legs and torso.

It wasn’t Kay. It wasn’t anything, just a vacant shell. But someday—

“It’s going to work,” she said, after a good two hours of companionate silence. She rubbed at her grimy face, achieving nothing; her hands and uniform were streaked with oil and grease and occasional chips of paint. Cassian, unfairly, was almost pristine, despite sitting nearby as he copied the long strings of code that comprised Kay’s sentience. “He’s survived, you’ll see.”

“Jyn,” he said quietly, and she turned to look at him, carefully keeping her filthy hands away from his clothes.

“Yes?”

He was gazing at her in the soft, dark way he did sometimes, his smile at once barely present and brilliant. Jyn’s pulse thudded in her throat, her gaze skittering down to his mouth, throat, chest, and back again. She knew she must look the same.

It had happened before. In lifts, hangars, shuttles, in icy Rebel halls and colder Imperial ones. But this felt different, somehow, Cassian with his clean hands and glossy hair staring at her like an astronomer watching the stars.

He swallowed. “Thank you. I never … I can’t … Jyn, thank you.”

It seemed to encompass more than Kay. And more than Kay was a very great deal. But then, they both owed each other a very great deal.

_Now, now._  This time was different. And she was filthy, but—her gaze dropped to his mouth again.

“It’s nothing,” she said, her voice low and distant. “I want him back, too.”

And she couldn’t help herself. She let her grimy hand drop onto his knee, and through the layers of their snowsuits, let an answering shiver tremble through her. Then she leaned closer, with intent as well as the attraction that always drew them together.

_“Jyn,”_  he said, and he always had something to say, but nobody said her name like that, not ever. There was nobody—

Cassian tilted his head down, hesitating centimeters away. But they’d hesitated long enough; Jyn made up the difference, pressing her lips to his, ready to back away if he wanted.

He kissed her back, lips dry and cracked and warm. So Jyn leaned closer, slanted her mouth against his with a leaky droid leg in her lap, shuddered again at his hands reaching for her shoulders, sliding up to her cheeks, catching in her half-fallen hair. When she licked at his mouth, even though her tongue stuck a little, his lips parted beneath hers, so readily that her mind spun. She felt drunk, or something beyond drunk, lost in some dazzling fog that left her breathless and muddled and shining.

“Jyn,” he murmured into her mouth, helplessly, and she bit into his lip.

Cassian made a low, hungry noise in his throat that burned through all thought but longing to hear it again.  _More,_ she needed more, finally, finally, finally—

The leg dropped out of her lap, hitting the floor with a loud clunk. They both jolted away, then smiled uncertainly.

_I love you_ , she thought, easy and painless. It wasn’t a revelation, exactly; she’d understood it for a long time. Before the Alderaanian missions, probably before Scarif, however improbably. 

What everyone else had seen, it was wrong. But it also wasn’t wrong, and she hadn’t understood  _that._

“You know,” he whispered, one hand cupping her cheek again. “Don’t you?”

Jyn brushed his hair from his face, triumph radiating through her at the streaks she’d left over his face, at the heavy gaze reflected back at her.

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”


	4. Chapter 4

If Cassian’s mind had spun before, now it whirled. Jyn had kissed him. Or maybe he’d … no, it was definitely her.

She’d leaned in, and he had too, mirroring her back at herself. Not for the first time. They’d leaned closer, not for the first time. And Jyn closed the last breath between them, pressed her lips so cautiously to his that he could see no thread of necessity unspooling from it, only the enjoyment of the moment. It was easy, so easy, to respond, to reach for her without any jangling of nerves or regret, nothing but pleasure in the touch of her skin and hair.

Not their first time for that, either. Technically. But this was pleasure without the pain and fear of their last moments on Scarif, without anything but the ferocity that spawned it. Her skin warmed under his hands, her fingers curled tight into his shirt, she scraped her teeth over his lip and he  _wanted_  her.

With a loud thunk, the KX’s leg dropped from Jyn’s lap. They both broke away, jarred out of the kiss, and maybe some of the spinning had been about oxygen. As if he cared. Cassian smiled unsteadily at her; Jyn smiled just as unsteadily back.

He loved her. It all but consumed him, how much he loved her, its fire licking at everything he was. He couldn’t tell her. He had to tell her.

“You know,” Cassian said urgently, touching her cheek again. “Don’t you?”

Jyn’s eyes went wide, but her smile brightened. She looked triumphant. She looked  _happy_ , reaching for him, stroking his hair out of his eyes. He hadn’t even noticed it there.

“Yes,” she told him, quiet and assured. “I know.”

Cassian believed her.

* * *

Jyn knew she should probably say something other than _I know._  Or Cassian should do more than ask if she did. He didn’t even say whether he believed her or not. At the very least, the unfilled silence should weigh on them.

Instead, they went back to work. A giant security droid wasn’t going to assemble itself. Or program itself. They continued side-by-side for hours, uninterrupted by anything except a meal and fielding some questions from Bodhi, who had a cargo run the next morning.

Sometimes, Jyn glanced at Cassian, then paused to watch him work, her gaze drifting from the quick movements of his hands to his fine-boned face. She flushed when he noticed—when he overtly noticed, because she very much doubted that he was ever oblivious to it. Cassian didn’t ogle her in quite the same way, but now and then her skin prickled at the sudden concentration of his attention on her, the tap of his fingers stilling.

Inevitably, their lingering looks at each other sometimes collided. They broke into smiles, at once nervous and delighted, every time. Jyn was not a smiling sort of person, but she couldn’t help it. Even when he seemed completely absorbed in scrolling through code, humming a little under his breath, she’d found herself unable to resist the impulse.

And since when did he hum? In-tune, too, the bastard.

Jyn didn’t need to hear  _I believe you._ Every glance and gesture already said it.

Their bubble of peace couldn’t last forever, of course, or even very long. They were cooling their heels at the moment—Draven had a firm policy of grounding operatives after undercover assignments—but it only shifted their duties to the base. With an early morning ahead of them, they put their tools away after a few hours, and joined the others for dinner, arriving in time to shake their heads at an argument between Baze and Han Solo.

Like most of Baze’s arguments, it was about the Force, if opposite to his position before. Chirrut beamed in his direction the whole while. Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, who stuck with Chirrut as much as their responsibilities allowed, grumbled to each other about Han, then cheered for him in the impromptu shooting contest later that evening.

“We could take him,” Jyn muttered to Cassian. “Both of them.”

His mouth twitched. “It wouldn’t be fair.”

It was a good day. Too good for Jyn to let herself consider what-ifs and then-whats; she knew how to snatch what she could from the here and now. She was happy, and she let herself be happy.

Only when they returned to their quarters, the door sealed shut behind them, did Jyn allow herself any other emotion. She took a deep breath of (comparatively) warm air.

“All right,” she said. “Now what?”

* * *

“What do you mean?”

Jyn and Cassian eyed each other, his glance cautious, hers unimpressed.

“You’re going to pretend that—”

“No,” said Cassian. “No. But what do you  _mean_?”

After a longer—and calmer—moment of consideration, she guessed that  _now what?_  had perhaps not been illuminating. Not that his  _you know?_  was any better, but … context helped.

She nearly snorted. “Context” was one word for it.

“I need—” 

A near-irresistible impulse urged her to turn away, away from his concentrated focus. Of her own, too. It didn’t have to be a rejection; she could busy herself with some task, shield herself in some way. But she kept her attention fixed on the two of them as they were, nervous and wide-eyed as they faced each other just past the door.

“What?” he said. It might have felt like a demand, but didn’t.

“I need to know what you want,” said Jyn. “What we want. We live together, we can’t just … ignore this.”

He licked his lips, which would have distracted a stronger woman than Jyn. She settled for blanking out her expression.

“No,” he said. Maybe agreement; maybe not. “We can’t. I need to know, too.”

Definitely agreement. She relaxed, a little. A very little.

“You answer first,” decided Jyn. “I started this.”

He glanced at the floor, flushing all over again. “I’m not sure. I’m usually not—” Cassian broke off, frustration all over his face. Then he laughed under his breath. “I usually speak better than this.”

“I know,” said Jyn, not without sympathy.

“I want—” His eyes lifted up, frustration giving way to something like wonder. “I want  _you_ , Jyn.”

Her entire body warmed, head going light. But this was more important. She had to be certain, and she needed to see what lay ahead—or might lie ahead—with as much clarity as possible.

“You don’t often, do you?” she asked. “In general.”

Cassian paused, one hesitation following another. Then, very slowly, he said, “Almost never.”

Jyn, pleased with the accuracy of her double suspicions, nodded. Not contradictory after all. 

Yet, despite her own resolve, she hesitated as much as he had, barely managing to scrape up the nerve to reach towards him again. Then she stopped again.

Cassian, eager to react if not initiate, instantly caught her hand. “And you?”

“Typical, I think,” said Jyn, considering. “I’m not particular about gender or anything like that. But I don’t like people touching me.” She looked down at their interlaced fingers. “Usually.”

What a pair they made. Grown adults, barely able to drive themselves into clasped hands and a pair of kisses. But she trusted him, and she trusted herself—separately, together. On every level, in every way. She didn’t let herself loosen her grasp or look away.

“I haven’t ever chosen someone,” she told him. “Not really. I didn’t trust anyone enough.” She thought about it. “Or at all.”

He smiled faintly. “I know. It’s the same for me. There’s choosing, and then …” His teeth dug into his lip, just a moment. “Choosing freely.”

“Exactly,” Jyn said. “Look, what the others think, it doesn’t matter. Not to me. I don’t care.”

She hadn’t risked sex many times. Certainly not as direct transaction, except pleasure for pleasure—if mutual indifference, and every instinct recoiling from contact, counted as  _pleasure for pleasure._ At any rate, she generally had more than one reason for it, and given the quality of her experience, desire was not often the first one.

Encouraged by the easy brush of skin, the darkness of his eyes, she stepped closer.

“I don’t, either,” said Cassian, his smile warmer, closer to the dazed look he got sometimes.

“This choice is free,” she said, and impatiently, clumsily, pressed her mouth to his hand. Cassian drew a sharp breath. “There’s nothing to gain that we don’t already have. Not for me. I want you because I want you. And because I trust you.”

He swallowed. “Yes. I don’t—there’s nothing—I’m here because I want to be here. And because we wanted to stay partners. You can believe that.”

“Partners,” she repeated, letting it linger on her tongue, smoothing the edges of every sensation. “You’re right, Cassian. It  _is_  a versatile word.”

He laughed, and she laughed too: an easy refrain. With the laughter came the last steps closer, until the lines of their bodies crushed each other’s coats, and their hands unnecessarily grasped at them. Just as easily, they tilted into another kiss, ready and instinctive as so little was for her.

Cassian’s hands closed on her waist, heating her skin through three layers of insulation. At some point or other, Jyn’s arm ended up slung around his shoulders, fingers buried in his hair. When they broke away to breathe, she saw that she’d ruined the neat fall of his hair, and this time the heat jolted right through her, settling heavily in her belly. She wanted to ruin him more, to drag her mouth over his beard and dig her teeth into his throat, to feel the slow stroke of his hands without layers of cloth between them, her skin shivering from pleasure instead of bone-deep repulsion.

She wasn’t how much either of them wanted beyond that. Maybe her distaste and his disinterest would reactivate at some point. Maybe some other obstacle would present itself. Maybe not.

They’d figure it out.

* * *

When Jyn and Cassian had worked as various fake Imperial couples, the distances in the spread of their rooms and beds felt terrifyingly intimate. Back in their own quarters, though, the mere inches left between them had always seemed comfortable. Charged, sometimes, but their own spaces, invisibly marked out.

Now, no distance remained at all, even though they’d done no more last night than kiss. For awhile. A good while. They’d slept wrapped up in each other, and felt no caution as they slept. And Jyn woke exactly as she’d gone to sleep, with Cassian pressed up against her, lying on his stomach, his back an easy target if not for Jyn’s arm about him, her other hand free to snatch up a blaster. It felt like as much trust as his mouth parting under hers. More, logically, but—as much.

She ran her fingers through his hair, the rumpled handiwork of last night visible even in the dimness of early dawn. Unable to resist the impulse, despite the morning ahead, she ran her fingers through his hair again, idly smoothing at tangles.

Maybe, she thought, his touch—even his sleeping touch—wouldn’t light up her nerves like this if she didn’t dislike it so much otherwise. The prickling she felt at the slightest brush of her skin hadn’t left her so much as transformed itself, irrational disgust turned to irrational pleasure. She couldn’t say. There was a lot she couldn’t say, put into words even to herself. She’d always been awkward with words, slow and repetitive; but she could feel.

_I’ll take it._

Inevitably, Cassian stirred. When he found her watching him, he smiled despite his heavy eyes; his face went from guarded to soft, as soft as hers felt. He braced himself on an elbow and leaned down to kiss her collarbone.

Jyn made a low, startled sound in her throat. She hadn’t expected—she, somehow she hadn’t—

“All right?” murmured Cassian.

“Yes,” she said. Force, yes. She tugged him back to her, repressing a shudder at his low laugh, failing to repress it at the scratch of his beard over her hypersensitized skin.

Jyn tilted her head back, scraping her fingers down his scalp and smoothing them restlessly over his shoulders, every part of her body heavy and jolting. In the cool silence of their quarters, her panting breaths sounded in her ears; she might have been embarrassed, if not for the heavy exhalations caught in the skin of her throat, Cassian pressing his lips up to her jaw.

Her hand curled around the back of his neck; her arm slipped about him, careful of his spine.

“Cassian.”

“Hm?”

Jyn shivered again, but pushed him away. When he jerked back, she kept a firm grip on his back. “I want to kiss you. That good by you?”

With an incredulous laugh, he shifted his weight to his side, his eyes dark even in the dimness. “Very good.”

She leaned forward and pressed kisses along his mouth, both of them eager and breathless. Their legs tangled as they pulled each other closer, Jyn’s hands clenching in Cassian’s hair. She needed—she—

Heat flashed over her skin, every centimeter of it. She caught his lower lip between hers, stroked her tongue over it, barely gave herself time to relish the tightening of his fingers on her and quick parting of his lips—how urgently he gave way—before licking into his mouth, her body thrilling at his shiver. But she needed him under her teeth, too.

Wanted, at least. Wanted very much. Jyn rushed after the impulse, lightly dragging her teeth down his lip, then biting down for no better reason than that she felt like it. But Cassian made that low, desperate sound again, and she smiled triumphantly, breaking the kiss.

“Jyn,” he mumbled.

She gave a sudden irrepressible laugh, devoid of amusement, or anything but raw delight. She couldn’t think of the last time she’d laughed and smiled so much. Love, in Jyn’s mind, had always seemed a distracting worry, a source of pain before all else. But this was—

She disliked the word, but couldn’t think of anything more accurate: this was sweet. Even with Cassian, even knowing what she felt, what they felt, she hadn’t imagined sweetness in joy.

Jyn reached out and pressed her thumb to his lip, wiping off a drop of blood.

“You’re dehydrated,” she said.

He grinned at her, a slow, lazy smile that she’d never seen outside this bed, and rather hoped she never would.

“Not the first thing on my mind just now.”

“No?” She leaned in again, swiped her tongue along his lip while he shuddered against her again.

Definitely good.

Jyn shifted just enough to comfortably kiss her way down his throat, tasting his skin while he gasped and tilted his head back. He was beautiful—always beautiful, but never more than this, and in an instant she had him flat on his back, pulse racing under her teeth while his nails scraped down her back.

Her hair hung down around her face, and its damp clinging to her skin brought back some dim sense of the galaxy beyond themselves. She pulled away to look properly at him, flushed and dazed, and both gulped down air.

Utterly pleased with herself and her choices, Jyn flopped down beside Cassian, trailing her fingers down his hand and arm. This was enough for now, more than enough, but she still craved touch as much as she’d loathed it before, needed that direct line of skin to skin, body against body.

If this was weakness, nobody else would know. Jyn curled close, and Cassian met her halfway, then turned his head to smile at her.

The smile, too, could only be called sweet. And hers too, damn it.

She might need a new word.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from "Annie's Song" by John Denver:
> 
> _Like a walk in the rain,_   
>  _Like a storm in the desert,_   
>  _Like a sleepy blue ocean,_   
>  _You fill up my senses,_   
>  _Come fill me again._
> 
> _Come, let me love you_   
>  _Let me give my life to you_   
>  _Let me drown in your laughter,_   
>  _Let me die in your arms._


End file.
